


shockwaves

by Pomfry



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dimension Travel, Gen, I Don't Even Know, No Uchiha Massacre, References to Depression, just take it, really its just an excuse for sasuke to be angry in a world that doesnt need his anger, though sasuke doesn't know it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 16:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomfry/pseuds/Pomfry
Summary: Sasuke wakes up seven years old again. With no idea how he got here, he trains and he trains, with hatred burning in his heart and anger in his veins. It's not much, but it's what gotten him through the years alone and it will have to be enough.





	shockwaves

**Author's Note:**

> im bored and didn't want to do the things I should be doing so here ya go. take this garbage

Sasuke is grimy. He's grimy and dirty and his hair is gross but he's forty-eight hours into a nightmare where his family is alive and he's seven and Itachi is on a mission. He's forty-eight hours into a nightmare that he wants to escape, wishes to escape. He's angry, more than anything, angry and seething that someone would dare trap him here. Angry that Itachi dares call him little brother, angry that his father looks at him and doesn't see him.

Sasuke is angry a lot, these days. It sometimes seems like that's all he feels. He's angry and he's hurt and he's desperate to leave.

He wanders through the compound, half-forgotten memories lending him names with faces. Cousin Nanika. Uncle Touya. They're muddled in his memories, like crayon drawings rained on, and he only remembers them when he sees them.

Their faces, now, are crisp and fresh and full of life, and Sasuke hates Itachi. Hates him,  _ hates him, _ hates that he could kill these people, these people who call out hellos and smiles and laughs. Hates that he could kill the toddlers clinging to their mother's legs, the teenagers rolling their eyes but helping anyway. He hates and he hates, and he sidesteps a five year old running without care, staring at her with something like heartache.

This is everything he missed. Everything he wants. He wants his family back, but not like this. Not like this.

He heads to the woods, hands in his pockets and chin high. He learned, years ago, that he has to appear confident so people don't doubt him. Konoha is a cesspit of liars and vultures ready to strike and Sasuke learned that when a clan head tried to take custody of him because his clan was bankrupt while Sasuke's was not.

Sasuke had refused. The Hokage had refused.

And rumors had spread, calling him an ungrateful brat, a little bastard. He was the Last Uchiha and so he was valuable. But that didn't mean that he was exempt from the treatment that drove his clan into their compound, even on the anniversary of his clan’s death.

( _ What a whelp, _ women hissed as sasuke stood in front of his family’s graves, head lowered to hide his tears.  _ Did you hear he refused someone’s request to adopt him? He’s so dumb,  _ laughs a little girl as sasuke bought tomatoes and cup ramen, the only thing he knew how to make.

sasuke hated Konoha long before he left it.)

The woods, though. The woods were safe, are safe. Nothing can get him in the woods. He spent a lot of time there, before. He spent more time there, after because there was nobody coming to tell him to home, to go eat. After, before he learned how to take care of himself through much trial and error, he collapsed a lot on the ground. From exhaustion, from hunger. He worked until he collapsed and he woke up in an ANBU’s arms, their hold sometimes gentle, sometimes mechanical. Either way, he ended up in his bed and he was alone again, in an empty and lonely house that he couldn’t even call home.

He doesn’t want to go home, doesn’t want to go back to the house that holds his father, holds his memories tainted by terror. He doesn’t want to go home and so he doesn’t. This is a trap. He can do what he wants as he tries to figure out how to escape.

(blood everywhere, the smell of death on the wind, and sasuke hadn’t known what it was, then, hadn’t known, and he wanted to vomit and —)  


He wants to escape. He needs to. The date is approaching and he doesn’t think that he can take it again, doesn’t think he can take the memories, the tang on blood on his tongue, the cold steel underneath his fingers. Doesn’t think that he can take it. The date is approaching and if he was in his real body, he could defeat Itachi and stop it but he’s only seven. only seven and barely a fighter at all. There’s no calluses that come from long practice, no burning in his lungs. There’s nothing that indicates he could fight Itachi off.

He’s sickened with how little he’s trained. As much as he wanted his father’s attention, as much as he tried, it was always with moderation, with his mother watching over him and stopping him at the slightest show of strain. After, though —   


Nobody could stop him. And he trained himself into the ground and came out stronger for it.

(his muscles hurt and he woke up at dawn every day after three hours of sleep, and he had so much homework, so much homework that sometimes he felt like he could drown but he never did, he just worked and worked and occasionally he wanted to scream.)

He’s been here for two days, exactly forty-nine hours, and he’s trained for thirty of it. It’s not enough to stop Itachi but it calms him down, makes him able to think.

He takes the kunai laying by a tree and starts working on his aim, ever aware of the eyes that watch him. It’s Shisui, he knows. He heard his mother asking him to make sure he doesn’t injure himself. Sasuke had privately scoffed at that. As if he could, as if he would. He knows how to train.

Sasuke is seven going on sixteen and he doesn’t know why he’s here. He woke up here when he fell asleep in a hotel bed, staring at the ceiling and counting the cracks in it.

He throws a kunai and it hits dead center. Sasuke doesn’t even blink at it, taking a step closer to a tree and walking up it to grab it. He hears Shisui’s sucked in a breath, but he doesn’t care. This is a trap, a genjutsu, something that he can’t escape, not yet, but he will. What does it matter that a long since dead relative will see him? What does it matter if they learn he already  _ knows _ all of this?

It doesn’t matter, and as much as his memories of Shisui are spotty at best, he knows that Shisui was an amazing shinobi, possibly better than Itachi in terms of speed. He was known for the Shunshin Jutsu. That’s all Sasuke got to know before he showed up dead in the river, both eyes gone.

Sasuke hadn’t gotten to look at the body. He’s weirdly grateful for it.

He sits on a branch and lets his little legs dangle. He doesn’t swing them. He just stares at the river and wonders, apathetically, if it would carry him away like it did Shisui, drown him and fill his lungs with water and finally let him rest.

Sasuke is so tired, you see? He’s so, so tired. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s been tired for years and his need for revenge is what has kept him going forward. Naruto started to be that reason, same with the rest of Team Seven, but — 

But that didn't work out well. And Sasuke focused on his vengeance.

He sits and he wonders and he sometimes tilts forward like he’ll fall into the currents but he never does.

He doesn’t notice Shisui leaving, too caught up in his thoughts.

 

\--

 

Itachi never wanted his brother to be a genius. Shisui knows it, knows it as well as he knows the hand signs for the jutsu after which he was nicknamed, because although he might not have said it, Shisui knows his cousin, knows him better than Itachi knows himself sometimes, and he knows that he never wanted the life of a genius for his little brother.

Geniuses are pushed, are pulled, are put through the ringer until their sanity is held together by a thread, by the thought of duty. They really go through a lot, and Itachi is in ANBU when he should be at genin, maybe even a chuunin, but he’s in ANBU and he never wants this life for his baby brother.

But Shisui just watched Sasuke walk up a tree with ease, throw a kunai without looking, his eyes frightfully blank. It could be a fluke but Shisui doesn’t think it was. He hopes it was, but he doesn’t think it was. It was too easily done, done without thought, and his face…

It reminds Shisui of the weird ANBU soldiers that come and go, the ones that have seen too much too often and die on their next mission, throwing themselves on their enemy’s blade. The way Sasuke had looked at the river, contemplative, had scared Shisui, as much as he pretends to be unshakeable. Sasuke, three days before, was happy, if a bit disappointed at his brother’s absence. Now, it’s like he doesn’t even care. And Shisui doesn’t know what happened.

He crashes into Mikoto’s house and Fugaku looks up from his newspaper, not surprised to see him. Mikoto sets the knife down on the counter, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Did you find anything?” she asks, and Shisui nods.

“You won’t like it.”

“I don’t like a lot of things,” Fugaku grunts, and Shisui snorts. 

“Tell us,” Mikoto says, eyes sharp.

Shisui fidgets with his hands. “Sasuke has been training a lot. He walked up a tree with no trouble and hit a target without looking at it. He’s not — not genius level, but the fact that he didn’t know how to do those things a few days ago and now can do them with ease…”

“...Points to him hiding his talents,” Fugaku finishes. He folds the newspaper in half. “We’ll have to see, then.”

Shisui’s shoulders slump. “Yeah, we’ll have to see.”

(He hopes and he hopes that he’s wrong but he doesn’t think he’s wrong. Because hope is never enough and he learned that the hard way.)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always loved and brighten up my day and are saved in my Gmail.
> 
> Here's my [Tumblr.](http://nikescaret.tumblr.com) Come visit and chat with me if you want!
> 
> (My discord is NikeScarlet#8096 if you wish to talk to me there)


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